Monthly Archives: October 2014

I have a problem. Could be a problem , or not.The thing is , I read a lot , and in more than one language.

At present I know three languages very well , and I’ve read literary books and various kinds of books in these languages.But I have also other books and coursebooks for learning other languages , some are in print form and others are ebooks along with online learning material I’ve downloaded . Audio files are generally helpful while learning a new language.The three languages I know best are English , French and Arabic . I’ve studied and learned other languages intermittently , depending on the circumstances or on how much free time I had.

For example , a few years ago I met a Russian girl and I had a relationship with her , and that gave me the incentive to learn Russian.Then I met a German girl , and that encouraged me to start learning German using a coursebook I had bought two years earlier.I have a Spanish language coursebook as well , so I’ve studied recently the first few chapters of this book.Of course the Spanish language is interesting and useful since it is spoken not only in Spain but in most of Central and South America and in many countries around the globe.

I have additionally a Portuguese language coursebook waiting to be read , and a Chinese language textbook for beginners and a Chinese language learning software I haven’t used yet . Now the Portuguese and Spanish languages are more or less related to each other , but learning Chinese could be more difficult as it is a non-alphabetic language and uses characters such as logograms , pictograms and ideograms . I’ll have to see if or when I will have enough time to start learning these languages.

Moving to another group or type of languages , I’ve been using and working with the Mathematica software and the (Wolfram) Mathematica programming language for more than fifteen years , and I have occasionally used in the past programming languages such as QBasic and the BASIC-like language of the TI-92 Plus calculator. I have also studied web programming for a certain period of time , and I got to know well a number of programming (and scripting ) languages. These include HTML , PHP (and the MySQL database management system which uses the SQL query language) and JavaScript.

However , I have to say that among the languages I know the most important one is a language called Mathematics.This is the essential and fundamental language of the exact sciences , and according to good old Galileo , the mathematical language is the one in which the great book of Nature and the Universe is written.

And if you are of the opinion that Mathematics is not as important as other languages for communicating and connecting people , think again. From Astronomy and Astronautics to Physics and Chemistry to electronic devices and components (which use disciplines such as solid-state physics , circuit and signal analysis , differential and difference equations , Fourier analysis , etc) , to computers (which use fields such as Boolean algebra , binary logic , and combinatorics) , to Biology , Psychology , Economics and business studies , Mathematics and applied math are indispensable to any study or research in science and engineering . Programming languages are more or less related to applied , discrete and computational math and to mathematical logic. Even the social and human sciences use math and statistics to get a reputation for exactness , precision and scientificity .